


The Other Side

by Missy



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Cemetery, Death, Friendship, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 03:58:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mourning a man who's been dead for hundreds of years - and who you just saw last week - is a difficult task.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kharasma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kharasma/gifts).



His parents find the ritual an odd one. “Since when is Marty into American history?” his father asks his mother as they stare out the front window of the house, standing quietly by as their son and his girlfriend drive away.

“You know teenage boys,” Lorraine says. “Wait another minute and he’ll be into video games or surfing.” 

“I don’t know,” George says. “Regularly visiting old graveyards? It’s sort of morbid.”

“Oh now George,” she tisks, patting his chest, “he’s just turning into a history nut! Maybe he’ll research the town’s founders and write a book of his own.”

“You never know, Lorraine,” he sighs. “You never, never know. He might be making out with Jennifer down there…”

“Jennifer’s a good girl!”

“So were you!” He pinches her bottom, pulling a shriek from Lorraine’s lungs. Then, with a note of humor to his tone, he adds, “keep an eye on his closet. If you start spotting a lot of black in there watch out for your hairspray. And your Ramoons tickets.”

“It’s Ramones!” she says, as they collapse into companionable laughter.

*** 

The old burial yard is terribly quiet. Of course it is, he tells himself; it’s filled with dead people. Jennifer’s fingers tighten around his knuckles as they walk together down the quiet rows of stone until they reach a row of tall, marble slabs, beaten about by storms, age, and careless teenagers.

And there, right in the center, sits the man Marty’s come to see. He carefully drops a handful of yellow carnations on the joint vault, crouching beside the tomb to trace the familiar, carved letters.

Doctor Emmett Lathrop Brown  
Beloved Husband, Father, and Grandfather  
1809-1905

Clara lay right beside him, her death date listed as coming seventeen years after his. Marty gave the stone an affectionate pat, remembering her laugh, and brushed away a stray creeper vine.

“It’s kind of wild, isn’t it?” Jennifer asks quietly, right out of the blue. “We just saw them last week.”

“Yeah,” Marty agrees, feeling her squeeze his shoulder. He’s gotten used to Doc and Clara and the kids nipping in and out of his life out of the blue, with tidings, gifts and stories. It made it impossible to mourn his friend, which is great – and pretty tough at the same time. 

The fact that he continues to see dead people in the flesh hundreds of years after their passing isn’t the only weird thing about standing by Clara and Doc’s graves, of course; sometimes he arrives to pay his respects and the stone looks fresher; sometimes the dates change; sometimes even the location of it in the cemetery shifts. Marty understood why without having to ask Doc during their fleeting time together; he knows everything depends on what Clara and Doc had been up to, where their travels in time had taken them. But no matter where Doc had died in the past, what he’d died from, Jules and Verne had returned their father’s body to Hill Valley, and always they lay in repose beside their parents and families, a whole Brown line going right up through and including a flag-strewn grave of a World War II veteran all the way over in Arlington. To living descendants who are Marty’s age; people he should know but won’t disturb. 

“It’s really heavy.”

But, as Doc would say, time waits for no man…unless you stop it. He rubs his wet eyes, refusing to let Jennifer notice how deeply it effects him – to be there, to know the cost of their adventure. “I’ll see you on the other side, Doc,” he says, saluting the old, crumbled tombstone, turning around to take his girlfriend’s hand.

As for how and when? That will be all up to Doc.

**Author's Note:**

> Your prompt made me wonder about the ramifications of Doc's marrying Clara, of their time-traveling locomotive - and how Marty and Jennifer deal with him popping in and out of the timestream. Hope this satisfied.


End file.
